The Cards We Are Dealt

{0.0}

The day that they hunted her down started off normally. She got up and took a shower, did her hair and applied a little make up. She got dressed for work and locked her apartment, checking the locks twice. She walked five and a half blocks to her work, taking in the warm summer air of San Francisco before entering Duke's Diner. She put on her apron and grabbed a tray, checking in with her boss about her nearing vacation to Louisiana before getting to work.

At the tender age of nineteen, she was favorite among the loyal customers of Duke's. She served, talked, and occasionally flirted with the customers, sneaking her favorite customer, old Hoyt, an extra piece of apple pie. She received a good amount of tips and managed to put in three shifts, working from six in the morning till ten at night. She collected her pay and started to make her way home. She took a leisurely walk, taking in the view of the bay and the stars. By the time she made it back to her house it was nearing eleven. Seven hours of private time sounded heavenly to her.

But that wasn't what she was going to get.

Her apartment seemed eerily quiet once she stepped inside. She flipped the light switch, but nothing happened. She swore lightly and grabbed the lighter she kept by the sink just in case. She flicked it on and looked around. Everything seemed in order. Simple couch and arm chair with a nice TV in the living room, normal kitchen, empty bathroom, chilly bedroom. She sighed, telling herself that she was being stupid.

Too bad she wasn't.

Out of nowhere, men appeared from all sides of her living room, one of them literally popping out of thin air. One had two guns, another had two swords drawn. One of them had saber-like teeth and the nails of a bag lady, while the man standing next to him had sharp looking bones growing out of his knuckles. The lights came on suddenly, revealing another man standing by her door. He also held a gun.

"Who are you?" she demanded. She was shaking, adrenaline rushing through her. The man with two swords smirked.

"We're what I like to call-"

"Don't even start," the one with bag lady nails said. "We're here to take you with us, Lorraine. Either come quietly like the good little girl that you are or we'll make you come with us. And that option won't be pretty."

A gun clicked. A sword swung. Why did these men want her? How did they know her first name? What were they going to do to her if she even agreed to go? She was smart enough to know that they were mutants, and she could tell that they weren't doing this for fun. No, she could tell they were under some sort of order, but who's? And why did whoever controlled them want her? She lived quietly. She never used her powers. Never. Not in anyway that would harmful, anyway.

She looked for a way out, and saw that the door was only guarded by one man. One man she could easily take down. She made up her mind. In a blur of ash-colored hair and ivory skin, she made a break for the door. She practically ran it down as she sprinted as fast as she could. She jumped down the balcony and landed with shaking limbs. But she knew she no time to waste. She ran past bullets as the street blurred past her, people so slow in their evening walks that they barely thought of her as person, but more like a sudden Bay wind. The bullets died off, and she was starting to loose her breath. She slowed, just slightly, thankful for her gift and for the fact that she was alive and unharmed. She looked wildly around her for any sign of the strange men who'd been in her apartment, but found none. She smiled, still running. She looked ahead two seconds too late. The blunt end of a sword came down on the base of her skull, and the street scene blurred and faded into black...

The Cards We Are Dealt

{0.1}

Lorraine woke up scared, alone, and in a cage. The floors were gray, just like the harsh metal that mage her cage. She had been redressed; a white wife beater and baggy red sweat pants made up her outfit, her feet left bare. It was freezing, but whoever had kidnapped her had been nice enough to leave a large black sweater in the corner. She tugged it on, the v-neck dipping low and the end of the shirt going past her hips. The largeness didn't matter at this point, though. As long as it brought warmth, however little of it.

Most of the other cages surrounding her were empty. The metal walls were rusting. The only other child in the room was a young one, maybe five years old. The cage around him was covered in ice. Lorraine could only assume that that was his mutation. She shivered, lying back down on the floor and pulling her knees into her chest to keep her body heat. She closed her eyes and almost started to cry before some one spoke, scaring her half to death.

"I'm sorry."

Lorraine's eyes flashed open and she looked around wildly, suddenly on the defensive. Her mutation reacted, and she was almost humming with energy. She finally located the source of the deep baritone voice. She looked at the person sitting lotus style in front of her cage and was surprised at what she saw.

He couldn't have been older than thirty; 6'2 with a lean, muscular build. He had a beard that frame his face in way that make her think he was some type of animal. His hair was medium brown, obviously styled, and his eyes were honey-green hazel with shots of chocolate in them. She knew this because he was literally ten inches away from her face. She didn't know who he was, nor did she know his name, his status at this strange place or what he was doing at her cage, staring at her without seeming to care that it made her panicky and somewhat flustered. She looked him in the eye for a second longer before she looked down at her hand, which was holding her up awkwardly.

"What?" she asked, completely at loss for a better word or phrase. She shook her head, putting her hand to it. The base of her skull throbbed like she'd been beaten there. He continued to stare at her, she noted, and she looked up in curiosity. He didn't look angry, but he didn't look happy, either. In fact, he looked... sad, almost regretful. She wondered if she reminded him of some one he missed. His eyes never left hers, and for the longest time, a time that seemed like a thousand years, she stared back. She was afraid of him because he was one of the men that brought her to this place, but also felt some amount of pity for him because he didn't look at her like she was a prize of his mission.

"Are you going to tell me your name or are you going to stare at me with that crease in your brows until the next decade passes?" he startled her when he spoke. His deep voice didn't surprise her, but his volume made her jump. His voice echoed off the walls as she sat up and looked up at him slightly.

"You already know my name," she said matter-of-factly, remembering clearly. "Or at least I think you do." He smirked.

"Well, at least we know that you didn't suffer brain damage," he muttered. She looked at him, a small crease forming between her eyebrows again.

"What's your name?" she asked. He didn't answer for a few minutes. He stared at her before answering.

"Jimmy."

"Hm," she replied, looking at him. He raised his eyebrow.

"What?"

"Nothing. I was just thinking," she said. When she looked at him closely, he reminded her of her father, from the pictures she saw of him when he was as young as Jimmy. It made her smile sadly. She got back on track, though. "Where am I?"

"An island," Jimmy replied uneasily. "Stryker's Island."

"Why am I here?" She tried to keep her questions nice, but it was hard.

"I can't tell you that."

"Why?"

Jimmy didn't reply. Lorraine accepted this and moved on. He was, after all, only a soldier with instructions. And those instructions had been to bring her here. He had succeeded. She had no right to be angry at him for doing his job. They stared at each other again, regarding the other silently until Lorraine tried asking a few more questions.

"Am I the only one here other than the child over there?"

"Not for long," Jimmy said bitterly. She titled her head.

"Is your boss hunting down mutants or something?"

"...You could say that," Logan said, obviously unsure himself. He looked angry now, but the sadness still stayed in his face. He obviously had mixed feelings about his boss.

"I'm sorry," she said. She didn't mean to bring him discomfort. He looked at her like she was stupid.

"You of all people should not be saying you're sorry," he said, shaking his head as if he didn't believe what he was hearing. "If anyone should be sorry," Jimmy whispered, "it's me."

Her eyes met with his again, and the anger and sadness looked familiar on him, as if he'd been wearing those emotions for quite some time. But what stood out to her was the sudden trace of self-loathing in his tone and in his eyes.

"Eat," he ordered, handing her a few rice cakes and a can of diet coke between the bars. The look she directed at him was both awkward and questioning. He rolled his eyes. "It's better than what you'll be getting around here. Eat what I bring you. It's probably the only decent food you'll get."

She didn't argue. She crammed down the food and guzzled the soda down quickly. She was starved. Not only did her mutation not let her sleep normally or stop fidgeting, it also called for vast amounts of food. Food that she obviously wasn't going to get here. Logan watched her eat her meal and wondered vaguely how much she usually ate in a day. She ran almost as fast as sound, and she was skinny as hell. He doubted the food here would help her stay alive. Her metabolism would probably eat her from the inside out. By the time Stryker did whatever the hell he was doing, Logan predicted, she'd already be dead.

He hoped his predictions were wrong. For reasons unknown, he didn't like to think of this girl that way. He felt like a blood traitor bringing her to this place, and he felt even worse because he had no idea why he was ordered to bring her here. Stryker never told his men what he planned to do with her. Jimmy's gut clenched painfully. Whatever it was, he hoped it wasn't bad, but knowing a man like Stryker, it was probably something he'd rather not think about.

"Do you regret bringing me here?" she asked suddenly, draining the last bit of soda from the can, her eyes focused on the aluminum. He looked at the floor.

"I've regretted a lot of things in my life," Jimmy said. They looked up at each other at the same exact time, making the connection almost as deep as his words.

"But I think kidnapping you is one of the things I regret the most."

The Cards We Are Dealt

{0.2}

Lorraine saw Jimmy every day he was on the island. She usually saw him when she woke up from a blackout sleep, her metabolism starved of the food she desperately needed. He always brought food, though she would have been happy if he'd just brought his company. She would admit, though, that the food made his visits even better.

"Are you feeling okay?" she asked once she woke up. He looked drained and tired, as if he'd lost some inner battle. He shook his head, handing her a soda, an apple, and, Praise God, an entire turkey sandwich. Logan was her hero. She took a large bite of her sandwich, chewed, swallowed. "What's wrong?"

"Have you ever- have you ever felt like-" Jimmy sighed, running a hand through his hair, frustrated. She looked at him with sympathy. Some people just sucked with words, her father used to say. Her father would have probably said that Jimmy, if he had ever gotten around to meeting him, was one of the few people who really sucked. Jimmy looked at her tiredly, as if he was struggling to say what he meant. She smiled softly at him.

"Just spit it out. No fancy words. No saying what you don't mean. I don't need pity, Jimmy."

"I'm leaving," he spilled. She stopped chewing for a minute, allowed for the news to sink in. She fought back the tears that threatened to make themselves known. She would not play the guilt trip on Jimmy. He did not need this now, and certainly not from her. She understood, from their month or so of communicating, that Jimmy did not enjoy his work here. He didn't like seeing her in a cage everyday. She could tell it upset him, that he blamed himself. She chewed again, swallowed. Jimmy did not need her sadness to add on to the weight on his shoulders or the guilt in his stomach. She had to be strong for him, and most of all, she needed to tell him that she understood and that she was not angry, even though she didn't entirely, and even though she was.

"Why?" she asked. She prayed that her voice didn't betray how broken she felt. Jimmy winced. It probably did.

"I can't stay here anymore. I can't work with Stryker," Jimmy explained. "I can't look at my brother anymore without seeing a murderer. I just - I just -can't, anymore, Lorraine. It's too much. It's too much work, too much murder, too much pain. I see you in this cage every day and all I can see in my mind is the fact that I put you here."

"You had help," she pointed out. Jimmy looked at her angrily.

"You know what I mean, Lorraine. We've been over this."

"I know. I was only trying to convince you otherwise," Lorraine sighed, looking at him. "Jimmy, I'm not angry with you. I'm unhappy that you'll leave and I'll undoubtedly miss you, but I know you're unhappy. If you're angry and unhappy and you can't be here anymore, leave. I understand, okay?"

"No, you don't," Jimmy muttered. Her anger flared.

"No, Jimmy, look at me," she ordered, something risky for some one to do while in a cage and talking to the man who put her there in the first place, or at least helped to. "If I was you, I would have left long ago. Don't let my being here chain you to this place," she told him, looking him dead in the eye. "Go, Jimmy. If you're unhappy, you have no need to stay."

Jimmy sent her a look that she was familiar with. It was the look that said he thought she was stupid. He shook his head.

"You're in a cage, God Damnit, because of me! We don't know how long you'll be trapped here! We don't even know what will happen to you! You might die here, because of me! Why are you so determined to make sure that I'm happy?" he roared, gripping the bars and looking at her, their faces an inch apart. Lorraine blinked, shrank back a bit, then looked to the floor.

"So that if it comes down to it, I can at least die here knowing that some one I care about is happy and alive."

The Cards We Are Dealt

{0.3}

She never heard from Jimmy again. His leave was almost heartbreaking, in fact, it would have been if she hadn't been warned beforehand. She lost track of the days without him; she never knew if it was day or night when she awoke or when her mind faded, numbing into black. She no longer 'slept' as peacefully as before. Jimmy had sort of been her sense of security, in a weird way. Now she was alone in her cage, left to fidget, sometimes pace when she needed to. Pretty much the only thing that kept her sane was the note that Jimmy left her before he left on a mission to Africa, where he planned to take his leave.

Lorraine,

I'm sorry. God, you don't know how much I need to say that. I'm sorry that I'm not strong enough to bust you out. I'm sorry that I got you here in the first place. I'm sorry that I've never really thanked you for keeping me sane this past , I suck with words. You know that more than alive for me, okay? I promise I'll come back and break you out. I : that sweater was mine. Keep it. You'll need it way more than me.

She swore that that letter he left her was the only thing keeping her from just giving up. She had to be strong for Jimmy. She told herself that every day; while she ate, while she sat alone, while she paced, while she showered, sometimes she heard the guards talk about how she said it in her blackouts, even. She ate the food she got and she tried to sleep to keep her strength up, though sleep was hard, considering her mutation. She only did the things that she knew Jimmy would want her to, which was stay warm, healthy, and probably clean. After Jimmy left, she had to get used to having a new guard escorting her to the showers. Naturally, every guard was male, as was Jimmy, but Jimmy she knew personally, at could at least expect that if he looked, she'd catch him and slap him so fast he literally wouldn't know what hit him. With the other guards, she didn't know their mutations, and she never talked to them unless told to do so. Another good thing was that Jimmy was one of the few guards tall enough to actually look over the curtain, anyway, so for the most part, Lorraine was safe.

Or as safe as you could get on Stryker's Island, anyway.

The Cards We Are Dealt

{0.4}

As the months passed by, Lorraine noted that more children and adults started to pile up in the cages. Many of them went crazy, muttering to themselves and glaring at anyone who passed. A few somehow managed to keep sane like her, concentrating on their parents or their loved ones or even God to keep them sane. But even with the crazies screaming here and there, life was dull in the cell, boring even.

Until the day the Killer hunted her down.

"You!" a voice bellowed. She'd been blacked out again. Her cage rattled and she woke up, bolting with energy, afraid. The people in the other cages looked at her with pity, confusion, and fear. She turned from them to see the person opening her cage door.

It was the men with the bag lady nails, and those said nails looked as sharp as razors. And they kept growing.

"You're the reason he left me!" he yelled, storming towards her. She flitted quickly to the other side of the cage, back against the harsh metal bars. He roared, outraged. She looked at him, confused.

"Who left you?" she asked. He tried to attack her again. She flitted to the opposite side of the cage. He glared at her in a way that made her stomach churn in fear.

"You know damn well who," he seethed, coming at her a third time. She bolted across her cage again, the other prisoners looking at her like she'd just done something amazing.

"Jimmy?" she wondered, then looked at the man attacking her. She saw the same self-loathing in his hazel eyes, the same anger in his face. The only thing about him that did not remind her of Jimmy was the intent of murder clearly written on his face. She bolted again. He roared in frustration.

"Yes, Jimmy! HE LEFT BECAUSE OF YOU!" he said, grabbing her quickly. She had almost no time to react. His nails scraped into her shoulder blades. She whimpered in pain.

Be strong. Be strong for Jimmy. Jimmy wants you to be strong. Jimmy wants you live. Be strong.

"He left because it was his decision!" she hissed at him, his nails going deeper. They'd leave scars, but she didn't care at that moment. "He didn't want to be here!"

"You told him to leave!" Blood dripped down her back. The icy boy in his cage cried, his tears turning to ice and smashing to the ground.

"I wanted him to stay!" she fired back. "But I told him to leave, yes! Yes I did! Because he couldn't stand to look at me, or you, for that matter! He couldn't look at you and not see a murderer! He couldn't look at me and not see that my imprisonment wasn't his fault! He couldn't do the work you do now! He wouldn't stand for anything you're doing right now!"

"I'm his God damned brother!"

"That doesn't justify your current actions," an icy voice said behind her. The man dropped her and she hit the ground, shoulders on fire. "Get out of here."

"But-"

"Now, Victor!" some one barked behind me. 'Victor' left quickly. Lorraine looked up at her savior and saw a man in his late thirties with graying hair and grayish black eyes.

"Now, now," her savior said. "Let's get you to the infirmary, shall we?"

She nodded and he helped her up. He lead her out of her cage towards the infirmary. Her savior. If he hadn't come in, Victor probably would have killed her.

Too bad her savior was actually her personal Hitler.

The Cards We Are Dealt

{0.5}

She woke up in her cage, her shoulder blades still feeling like they were aflame. She racked her memory for what happened, and remembered quickly. Stryker had had nurse take her of her. They weren't deep enough for stitches, and luckily, with the fact that her body seemed to do everything faster than any normal human, her body's natural healing speed would hopefully be enough to heal the scratches within the week. The nurse told her she'd have scars though, and even took a mirror to show her where they were. The scars ran along her shoulder blades like rugged lines by magic marker. There were five scars on both her shoulder blades, and they ran in a way that if she connected them with marker, it would look like she had wings. The nurse said they'd probably never go away. The tissue damage was deep. Lorraine didn't mind. In a sick and twisted way, she liked her newfound scars. She'd always wanted tattoos on her shoulder blades anyway. These would just be a little more... attention grabbing.

She soothed a hand over a shoulder blade as she sat up, jittery from her black out. She pushed herself up and started to pace. Her neighbor was facing Mecca again, but she was too energetic to be polite and stand still until he was done. She prowled around her cell, rubbing her fingers over the small dips in her skin where the scars would show underneath Jimmy's sweater. She had proof that she'd been strong for him, and for her. No one could ever tell her now that she was a coward, a person only good at running away. She winced at the memory of just who had said that to her.

The door slammed, and she whirled around. The icy boy stared at the man with two swords and the man with two guns dragged a barely conscious man down the row of their cages. The man with two guns opened the cage next to her and the swordsman threw the man in, uncaring of his barely awake state. Lorraine cringed as his body hit the cement with a sickening crack. She guessed that he probably just broke his ulna trying to stop the fall.

"Merde," the man hissed, taking hold of his arm. He sat up, wobbled a bit, obviously light headed. Lorraine stared as the man looked around. He had wavy dark brown hair, some stubble around his jaw. He was lankier than Logan, but he was probably just as strong as the muscles in his arms flexed as he moved warily. It wasn't until his gaze landed on her that she saw his eyes. Bright, shining crimson eyes stared back at her. She had the familiar sudden urge to run more than she had ever felt before, but she couldn't look away. His eyes were so... hypnotic.

"Well," he said, eyes never letting up in their intensity as he looked her up and down, "maybe this prison ain't so bad after all."

The Cards We Are Dealt

{0.6}

"What's your name, chere?" he asked, thick Cajun accent doing nothing to slow her naturally erratic heart rate down. She blinked, somewhat taken aback. He raised an eyebrow at her. "Well, sugar?"

"Lorraine," she finally said, holding a fist to her heart and staring at him like he was particularly frightening. Her stance made him want to laugh. Her face made him stare.

"French name," he murmured. She nodded, sitting down so that she wasn't awkwardly looking down at him. He was probably taller than her when standing, and she didn't enjoy looking down at people. It made her feel odd.

"My mother was from Normandy," Lorraine admitted, hugging her arms across her torso. "What's your name?"

"Remy LeBeau, chere, pleasure to meet you," he purred, reaching through the bars with his free hand and grabbing her own, bringing it to his lips. She lit up, bright pink. He smirked. "What you blushin' for, chere?"

Lorraine found it difficult to speak at that moment in time. Remy found this incredibly amusing, and despite the pain in his arm, he chuckled. Her face upgraded from bright pink to a deep rose color. It made him smile. He looked at her. Pretty dark blond hair, grassy green eyes, skin so pale it looked ivory. She was tiny, possibly too much for her own good, and the sweater she wore made her look small and fragile, like a porcelain doll. Lorraine shifted her position, and he noticed that she was jittery, possibly even fidgety. She drummed her fingers against the floor, clutched her upper arm with the other one. Her foot tapped in time with her fingers, and he wondered if she'd previously been a piano player. He looked her in the eyes. Crimson on forest green.

"What you here for, chere?"

"I don't know," she admitted, the tempo in her fingers and foot getting faster. "I really don't. I've been here for months," she explained. That much, he thought, was obvious. She was borderline stick thin. She had some curves left, from what he could see, but he could easily identify her collar bones. Her neck was long, her cheekbones obvious. Somehow, he could picture her with a rounder face, maybe a little more meat on her bones. He could have sworn that he'd seen her somewhere, maybe in New Orleans, maybe somewhere. He just couldn't place her, but he knew he'd seen her somewhere. He could picture her too easily healthier to not have. He could also easily see that she would look amazing in green or dark, mysterious maroon. He tried to keep his imagination low. That last thing he needed in a prison with a cage next to a pretty girl was a problem that needed taking care of. She looked at him, questioning with her eyes. "Do you know why we're here?"

Remy sighed, rubbing a hand over his eyes, massaging his temples. "I haven't the faintest idea, chere. I just know I want to get the hell out of here."

"You think you want out now, just wait till you've been here a month," she told him. He grinned lazily, closing his eyes.

"Yeah, I imagine that'll suck."

The Cards We Are Dealt

{0.7}

"Whatcha'll got that the boss wants, chere?" Remy asked once. They'd been sitting in silence before. Conversation tended to come and go awkwardly in their case. Half the time she wanted to talk, he was asleep, and sometimes she'd black out in the middle of conversation. He wasn't annoyed about it though, he'd learned quickly that she couldn't control them.

"I don't know what he wants with me," she said tiredly, obviously having thought about this question before, "but I'm guessing whatever he wants with me has something to do with my mutation."

"A logical guess," Remy insisted. She sighed.

"Well, considering all the people here are mutants, I don't really know what else he'd have in mind," she said, a sour undertone to her voice. "The sad thing is that I've been here the longest, but I definitely wasn't the first one to go."

"What's your theory on that, chere?" Remy asked, curious. He'd learned over the past few weeks that Lorraine was full of questions and answers, full of theories and logical thoughts. She was a mysterious one, Lorraine. Always mumbling to herself in her sleep, tossing and turning. She'd been shy at first, almost scared, but she opened up easy enough. However talkative she may have turned out to be, however, Remy found that she never really talked about herself. He knew nothing about her past, almost nothing about her plans for the future. From what he gathered, she'd been living alone when they kidnapped her. She was distant, but not in a way that she meant to be. It was just her nature.

She studied him. Remy was insistent, always wanting to know what was going on in her head. He was obviously not used to having women be a mystery to him, and getting information about his past was easier than taking candy from a baby. He'd lived his entire life in New Orleans (a place Lorraine had once been for a short time), had a talent for poker, and had been raised by thieves. He owed a lot of people money, and he was a ladies man, but that part she knew without him telling her. It was hard to look like he did, all rugged and handsome, and have a thick Cajun accent that made her knees weak, without being one. His crimson eyes brought her back out of her staring daze.

"It's probably some twisted game, like a death pool or something," she said, glaring as the man with two swords came in to take away a boy with dual colored eyes. "The longer you manage to stay alive and well here, the more important you are to him. Obviously, most of these mutants aren't very important, or at least, not important enough to live past a few weeks."

Her eyes were sad and angry. It was a look she'd been wearing the majority of the time he'd known her.

"The world is a sick and twisted place, chere," Remy said. "To survive, you need to know how to play the card you are dealt."